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Broiled Shad's Roe with Bacon
Wash thoroughly six pieces of shad's roe, wipe well with a towel, lay them on a dish and season with one good pinch of salt and two tablespoonfuls of sweet oil. Roll them gently to avoid breaking, arrange them on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Remove from the fire, lay them on a hot dish and pour over one gill of maitre d'hotel butter. Garnish with six slices of broiled bacon and six quarters of lemon and serve.
A plain Waldorf grill item that depends almost entirely on handling the roe gently and not overcooking it. Two terms in the text need translating before you start.
- Sweet oilNineteenth-century American shorthand for mild olive oil, used as a coating rather than a flavour. Any neutral or light olive oil works.
- A gill of maitre d'hotel butterA gill is half a cup, which is generous for six pieces; a quarter cup is plenty for most tables. Maitre d'hotel butter is simply softened butter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, spooned on so it melts over the hot roe.
- "Six pieces" means lobes, not sets"Six pieces" -- Shad roe comes as a paired sac joined by a membrane, so "pieces" may mean single lobes or whole paired sets; the recipe does not specify. Read as lobes, six is three sets, serving three to six depending on course; the six bacon slices and six lemon quarters may instead indicate six portions.
- Score the membraneThe sac tightens and can burst under direct heat. Prick or lightly score it in a few places before oiling, and turn the roe with a spatula rather than tongs.
- Broiler and heat"Broiler" here means a grill surface over or under direct fire, coal or gas, not an oven setting. Under a modern overhead broiler, set the rack about four inches from the element and keep the heat moderate rather than fierce, or the outside blackens before the centre sets.
- TimingSix minutes a side suits a large set over coals; smaller lobes are done in three to four minutes a side. The roe should be uniformly pale grey-pink throughout with no red, deep-coloured centre, and it turns dry and grainy if pushed much past that.
- The gentler routeA common modern approach is to poach the roe in barely simmering salted water for a few minutes first, drain and cool it, then oil and broil only to colour. This firms the sacs and makes bursting far less likely.
- Bacon and garnishCook the bacon first and hold it warm; the roe wants the broiler to itself. Lemon quarters are not decorative here, the roe is rich and wants the acid.
Shad is an anadromous fish that runs up the Atlantic rivers in early spring, and its roe was one of the great seasonal markers of the American table in the nineteenth century, appearing on Hudson, Delaware and Chesapeake menus for a few weeks and then disappearing until the next year. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, published this collection in 1896, when a New York hotel kitchen was expected to put the arriving delicacy on the card the moment it reached the market, cooked in the simplest way that showed it off: over the coals, with bacon for fat and salt, lemon for acid, and a compound butter named for Oscar's own office. Shad stocks have fallen sharply since, and roe that was once cheap and abundant is now a brief, expensive specialty item..